East India Ships.ComCompendium of Ship Incidents incurred by
the English East India Co.

In
1600 Queen Elizabeth I granted a group of London merchants the exclusive
privilege of trading between England and the lands between the Cape of Good Hope
and the Straits of Magellan for fifteen years. The political upheavals of the
first century – civil wars, regicide, revolution – were matched by faction and
disruption in the East India trade, producing a succession of chartered
companies. Finally, two bitterly hostile companies competed with each other to
the detriment of the trade. As the eighteenth century dawned they combined to
form the United Company of Merchants of England trading to the East Indies,
which operated out of its headquarters in Leadenhall Street from 1709 until
government assumed all its powers in 1858.

The vast bulk of the
trade of all of these companies was carried on privately owned ships hired
exclusively to the Company according to a unique arrangement reflecting the
problems presented by such a distant trade. This system came to an end in 1834
when the Company withdrew from commercial operations.

This
website gives details of the project to list 'incidents' incurred by ships
employed , or once employed by, the English East India Company. ‘Incidents’ a term embracing a
variety of misfortunes - wreck, foundering, burning, capture, mutiny – suffered
by the ships of the United Company.

The
details of these incidents are being assembled in an Interactive Subject Record
(ISR) which is web based and is compiled into an .exe file in the form of an
E-Book. See 'About'

This ISR is initially being divided loosely into two sections;

Incidents c.1600 to c.1700.

Incidents c. 1700 to c.1834.

Many hundreds of hours work has already been undertaken on the latter, much less
on the former.

This site is intended to give details of the incidents being investigated.
The current status of the Interactive E-Book will be available to researchers &
contributors via a file downloadable from Dropbox.